Nothing
by Flying-Antelope
Summary: Gamzee doesn't know what's going on in his head. And Rose doesn't either.


Sometimes Gamzee just sits there and waits for the stuff to flush out of his system.

He sits there, thinking about everything and nothing, and if you looked at him for a while, the first thing you would see is his thicket of messy, oil-slicked hair, limp and hanging and messy as if a raven slathered in grease just fell apart after dying, and the remaining clumps somehow found themselves on this troll's head.

You'd see that wide expanse of forehead framed by that ridiculous muddle of hair, curly and wild, dipping down gently into basinfuls of bright yellow moons for eyes, half-obscured by heavy curtains of gray skin.

You'd see the outline of the bottom of the curtain swerve dangerously into the shadows pinching the corners of his eyes into cramped clusters of demonic laugh lines all tight and cozy against each other, desperately reaching out of his face like a bunch of helium balloons tied to the same thin pole.

Maybe then your eyes would travel onto the jagged mountain of nose, jerking reluctantly to its spongy peak, then dropping down into a shallow canal of gray above his lips.

Maybe you'd see this canal flow into the top pile of more black-black-green, the limey neon gunk fastening itself nicely onto the bottom of a plump, jutting mound of lip and hanging there, leaving tiny, dotted footprints onto the soft curvature of his chin.

Maybe you'd see all that and more, maybe you'd see the subtle swelling of his cheeks starting to overtake his once prominent cheekbones, maybe you'd see his one partially torn ear that's probably turned purple by now on the very fringes of the hanging flesh, hiding behind his stupid hair, maybe, maybe, maybe.

But you'd probably stop looking after reaching his eyes. One little glance and those eyes would be the only thing you'd take from the experience, seeing only the warm, oddly friendly glow that can only be found someone who isn't quite there to tell themselves how to feel. You might think on it for a while, trying to shake the memory out of your head, trying to clamp down on the image and cover it with the biggest blankie you can find, trying to stifle its light and trap it like a bug, but I think you'd probably just keep thinking, and thinking, and thinking, until you drive yourself crazy with thinking—as crazy as he is—even more so than you usually do, because you know what those eyes mean, you are so, so fucking sure of what they mean, but no of course they can't mean that why would they ever but they are they motherfucking are because those are the eyes of a mOtHeRfUcKiNg mUrDeReR

But no, those eyes aren't really at that point yet, maybe they've been there sometime, maybe they've been there and back and there again, but you think that it's a little different, like the seed of something crazy is buried somewhere under layers of sopor slime. Kind of like how you were trying to suppress that stupid memory but it still shines though a little until it gets to you.

You are Rose Lalonde and seeing Gamzee Makara is something that you will never unsee.

Being Rose Lalonde means a lot of things. It means that you are cool, calm, collected, that you use big words and you always know what you're doing and people can see that pretty easily about you. Being Rose Lalonde means that you're kind of pretentious and a bit of a snob, and being Rose Lalonde means that you are always calculating and analyzing, never having your breath hitch because you saw something a little peculiar, but rather looking at it with a cynical eye and then making fun of it in that meta way you have.

But when Rose Lalonde finds Gamzee Makara, you're smart enough to know there's something wrong with him. You sees his lazy smile, his tiny little fangs, his idle mouth forming that easy, loping speech of his, and you know he's not right because you're not a fool, never been a fool.

Usually Gamzee likes to go about his business, mess around with his silly syllabus to stare at the pretty lights for hours, pester his friends online, swim around in the ocean, and rearrange his furniture into more fitting places for the day, but it's once in a while that Gamzee feels something that he's starting to feel pretty often. He doesn't think he likes this feeling, though it never demands his attention, never grasps for his brain, never clutches at his thoughts. Instead, it sits around, feeding on something—he doesn't know what but he thinks that it probably is because he knows nothing can live without sustenance—and even though it'll never force Gamzee to look into its little corner of his mind, Gamzee looks there anyway but never quite finds what he thinks he will.

It's probably the slime, probably the slime putting up a kind of mental film over everything Gamzee tries to see so he never sees the feeling, never even gets the feel of the feeling, and kind of only gets the traces of the feeling. He sees the proof that they were there at some point, little quirks that weren't there before (because Gamzee's spent a lot of time around his brain) and little clues like notes put up all over the walls of his head, telling him it has to be there. But the harder he searches, the less he knows with and the deeper he goes down.

It's at these times that he finds himself sitting around wherever he is, so deep inside himself and so out of his mind that there's nothing to do but do nothing.

Being Rose Lalonde isn't just being the emotionally indifferent one, however. Being Rose Lalonde also means that you have some strange grimdark powers from horrorterrors that were probably never meant to be communicated with at all, let alone borrowing powers and abilities from. It can really screw with your head sometimes, even if you won't admit it. It's there, always there, like the dripping of some kind of inane fountain at the back of your mind that you get fed up with eventually and try to reach in and turn off, but your arm just falls a little short and you can only graze the rusting metal of the handle with your longest finger.

You don't really know it's rusting, or if it's metal at all, but it's your mind and you can imagine what you want. Despite what people might think about you, you really do have a big imagination. Sometimes you imagine these strange creatures that scream these muted shrieks and then get sucked into the same chamber where the fountain is. These creatures aren't quite focused in your mind and as hard as you may try, the more you try to force the pictures into your vision, the more you lose the few pieces that you have. Eventually the little evidence that were there at all slip away from you and go down the drain with the drops of water that you've resigned yourself to knowing will never go away.

Maybe if you were a mind-reader or a psychic like Vriska, you might be able to look inside Gamzee's mind, look through the all the most obvious never-ending tunnels, dug through violently by something, down to the most minute crevices, probably created while still soft by rapid waters.

If you could burrow into the recesses of Gamzee's mind, you'd probably end up finding that same nagging thing inside of him that you know is inside of you. It would probably take on a different form, but you'd know it's the same thing. It would take on a different form both to you while sifting through his rings of thought and to him while he lives on his daily life. Still, you'd be able to search through his mind to gain insight on your own. You'd be able to find another who can understand that silly thing inside you that isn't so silly when you start tearing your hair out trying to understand it. You'd know that you're not the only one going through something so frustrating, so infuriating, so literally mind-numbing that you can't even figure out an escape from your utterly pointless hunt. And maybe you'd even make a friend that would get what you do on an entirely different level than anyone else you've ever known.

But you're not a mind-reader or a psychic so maybe you'd find out another way about the troll's similar situation. Or maybe you won't, for how could you know of all these possibilities when the only time you've seen him was through dreams? Probably dreams conjured up by the horrorterrors to torture you, or maybe by the monsters in the fountain that you know find their only amusement through making you suffer.

It doesn't matter, you would probably suppose, should you actually know anything about the circumstances of this predicament you're in; the sopor slime would probably censor everything out anyway, and you never liked reading tarnished works.


End file.
